Shame and guilt keep smokers smoking

Often what keeps smokers smoking is either shame or guilt or both. As a coach, I never want to add to either emotion with my clients. Shame is "there is something wrong with me (that's why I can't quit)". Guilt is "I'm doing something wrong (but I don't know how to stop)". I remember feeling both after my first cancer diagnosis---even smokers would bug me to quit--"VJ, why are you smoking, you've had cancer?" This was back in the late '80's and I would get mad because even though I wanted to quit, I didn't know how and because I had tried and failed so many times, I figured something is wrong with me. The last time I relapsed, I became a closet smoker--nobody knew I had gone back to smoking because I just didn't want to hear any remarks. Finally at a 4th of July party, I couldn't stand it anymore and I lite up. You could hear the disappointment in a friends voice when she said, "but you were doing so well."---not really I had been smoking for months, she just didn't know it.

So  when my quitters talk to others about quitting, I suggest they say--"If I can quit, there is hope for you too, I know you can be successful, when you're ready"--instead of "If I can do it, you can too"---just a slightly different phrasing but the impact can be great. Haven't we all heard some "holier than thou" former smokers bellow--"If I can quit, ANYBODY can quit" and in the back of our minds we're thinking--not me, I've tried and I can't, which increases feelings of shame and/or guilt.

I do believe that anybody can quit--but the timing needs to be right, there needs to be sufficient motivation and desire, there is a re-learning process where the person is going to feel uncomfortable as they are learning to live without smoking and sometimes it doesn't seem worth the effort to learn high effort coping skills when low effort smoking works so well for us. There is physical addiction to deal with as well as emotional ties and habits.

What is addiction?

Have you ever thought of the perfect response to a comment later? That happened to me a few days ago when I was talking to a group of physicians. One said, "Nicotine is not an addiction. Addiction is when you hold up your mother for money to buy your drugs." I mumbled some answer and only later thought about what I wish I had said:

When I talk about nicotine being addictive, I'm talking about how nicotine hijacks the smokers brain, just as other addictive substances also do. What this man was talking about was the behavior to obtain the addict's drug of choice. It is the difference between an illegal, expensive and hard to obtain drug (such as heroin) and a legal, cheap drug that can be bought in every grocery store. If the roles were reversed between heroin and nicotine, I think you would see more heroin addicts because of increased availability but with a cheap cost, crime would drop. On the other hand, if nicotine were illegal, many smokers would quit due to lack of availability but crime would increase. There would be some smokers that would rob their own mothers to get money to buy cigarettes.

Addicts will do almost anything to get their drug of choice regardless of the drug. It is the disorder of the brain that causes this complusion. I've talked to smokers who are homeless and penniless. They will scour the street for tossed butts that they can finish off or get a pack of papers and re-roll the used tobacco. It that's not an addiction, I don't know what is.